Anemia

I have always been fascinated with the Anasazi and all Native American cultures in the southwest. I took a couple of anthropology classes in college, but most of my study and reading has been on my own. The landscape there is so beautiful and mysterious. I love the open areas, the expanse of large valleys, the vistas, the dryness and the color. I love to watch birds of prey float on the thermals circling the landscape.


A few years ago, I began to read the writings of Craig Childs. His writing interests me, but I get the feeling that some of his adventures and stories are exaggerated. Of course, I have no way of knowing that, it's just a feeling. Still, I have learned that fiction or partial fiction is good. Is it real if it happens in the writer's mind? Whether real or not it did happen.


This is my poem about the people who inhabited part of the southwest--maybe those around Chaco Canyon.
















Anemia

Chert, notched and chipped
holds its edge for one-thousand years,
lays on ground churned by wind and water.
Its story whispered on hot thermals
that carry vulture wings high above mesas
where signal fire smoke sought the moon.

Summer solstice light
slides along its flaked
sides, the workmanship
of ancient hunters
who had to settle for the gold
maize of civilization.

Blown dust reveals maddened minds,
body cavity cages with arrowheads inside,
bones boiled and cracked.
Human muscle protein
myoglobin residue on the inside of pots,
and in human feces laying next
to smashed skulls.